Marijuana
Cannabis Growing Guide Part 4
A Marijuana Garden At Home
Table of contents
[Overview] [Genetics And The Marijuana Plant] [Germination] [Growth Stage] [Flowering Stage] [Grow Lights] [Male And Female Plants] [Sinsemilla] [Growing With Hydroponics] [Soil Growing Indoors] [Shelf Growing With Soil Indoors] [Soil Growing Indoors And Outdoors] [Growing Outdoors] [Guerrilla Growing] [Harvesting] [Storage] [Security] [Odors] [Pests] [Nutrients] [Foliar Feeding] [pH] [Carbon Dioxide] [Temperature] [Venting] [Transplanting] [Pruning] [Cloning] [Breeding] Shelf Growing With Soil Indoors
Shelf gardening with fluorescents is cost effective introduction to the art of growing marijuana, since the materials are so inexpensive and easy to obtain. Fluorescent lamps are great for shelf gardening marijuana plants up until they are ready to flower.
Fluorescent lamps should not be used when flowering marijuana plants because the finished product will be inferior to that grown in natural sunlight or HID lighting (high pressure sodium and metal halide especially). However, if you are short of funds but would still like to learn how to grow marijuana, you can use fluorescent lighting through all stages of growth.
In this system, many shelves can be placed, one above the other, and fluorescent lamps are used on each shelf. Some shelves have 24 hour lighting, some have 12 hour lighting (for flowering). Two areas are best, perhaps with one other devoted to cloning and germination of seed.
Shelf gardening assumes your going to keep all plants 3 feet or shorter at maturity, so all shelves are 3-4 feet apart. Less light is necessary when you have plants that are this short and forced to mature early.
One drawback to a shelf garden like this is that it is very time consuming to adjust the lamp height every day, and it is harder to take a vacation for even a week with no tending of the garden. This applies mostly to the vegetative stage, when plants are growing as much as an inch per day. Lamps on the flowering shelves are not adjusted nearly as often.
Normally, the lamps should be kept within 3-5 inches of the tops of the plants, with the plants arranged such that they get progressively taller as the end of the lamps go up, so that all plants are within this 3-5 inch range.
This is an ideal however, and if you do go on vacation, adjust the lamps so that your sure the plants will not be able to grow up to the lamps within that length of time.
If enough fluorescents are used to completely saturate the shelf with light, the spacing issue will not create spindly plants. They will grow a little slower if the lamps are not very close to them.
An alternative is to use fluorescent lamps for cloning, germination and early seedling growth on the top shelf of a closet, then switch over to high pressure sodium (hps) for heavy vegetative growth and/or flowering in the main closet area.
Position the hps such that it won't need adjustment, at the top most possible point in the closet or room. When used for flowering only, most hps installations will not require much lamp height adjustment.
Just attach the lamp to the underside of shelf or ceiling as high as possible, and if you want to get a few plants closer to it, put them on a temporary shelf, box or table to get them closer to the lamp.
A shelf is all that is necessary with this type of setup, preferably at least 18 inches wide, up to about 24 inches maximum. This area must be painted a very bright white, or covered with aluminum foil, dull side out to reflect light back to the plants (dull side out prevents hot-spots and diffuses light better).
Paint the shelf white too. Or, use aluminized mylar, a space blanket, or any silvery surface material. Do not use mirrors, as the glass absorbs light.
Hang fluorescent fixtures from chains and make sure you can adjust them with hooks or some other type of mechanism so they can be kept as close to the plants as possible at all times (3-5 inches).
If the lamps are too far from the plants, the plants could grow long, spindly stems trying to reach the lamp, and will not produce as much bud at maturity.
This is due to inter node length being much longer. This is the length of stem between each set of leaves. If it is shorter, there can be more inter nodes, thus more branches, thus a plant that provides more buds in less space at harvest time.
Shelf gardening is sometimes referred to as sea of green, because many plants are grown close together, creating a green canopy of tops that are grown and matured quickly, and the next crop is started and growing concurrently in a separate area of continuous light.
Clones are raised in a constant light shelf, until they start to grow well vegetatively, then placed on a 12 hour per day shelf to flower.
Starting The Plants Indoors
A small indoor space should be found that can be used to plant the seeds after they germinate. These vegetative starts are placed outside to mature in the spring after last freezes are over. The space can be a closet, a section of a bedroom, a basement area, an attic or unused bathroom.
Some people devote entire bedrooms to growing. The space must be light leak proofed, so that no suspicious light is seen from outside the house. This could invite thieves. The space should be vented.
Opening the door of a closet can be enough ventilation if the space is not lit by big lights that generate a lot of heat. Separate exhaust and incoming air vents are best. One at the top of the room to exhaust air into the attic or out the roof, and one to bring in air from an outside wall or under-floor crawl space.
Use fans from old computer cabinets, often available from electronic liquidators for cheap. Dimmer switches can be used to regulate the speed/noise of the fans. Use silicon to secure the fans to 4-6 inch PVC pipe pushed thru a round hole cut in the floor and ceilings.
Line the walls with white plastic, aluminum foil (dull side out to diffuse the light and prevent hot-spots), or paint the walls flat white to reflect light. Mylar, 1 mil thick is best but it can be expensive. Mirrors are not good to use because the glass eats light.
Line the floor with plastic in case of water spills, etc. Set up a voltage interrupt socket and be sure the electrical wiring will handle the lamps your going to use. Always place ballasts for HID lamps on a shelf, so they are above floor level, in case of water spills. Something placed on the floor under a ballast will work too.
A shelf above the main grow area can be used to clone cuttings and germinate seedlings. It will allow you to double the area of your grow space and is an invaluable storage area for plant food, spray bottles and other gardening supplies. This area stays very warm, and no germination warming pad will be needed, so this arrangement saves you $.
Hang a light proof curtain to separate this shelf from the main area when used for flowering. This will allow constant lights on the shelf and dark periods in the main grow area. Velcro can be used to keep the curtain in place and ties can be used to roll it up when tending the garden. Black vinyl with white backing works best.
Now you need light. A couple of fluorescent shop lights will be fine if you just want to start plants inside and then take them outside to grow in a small greenhouse. A 48 inch fluorescent light fixture designed to work with 2-4 lights (rated at 30-60 watts each) can be purchased with bulbs for about $20-$50.
Use cool white light type bulbs rather than expensive Grow Lux bulbs, as they do not put out as much light, and therefor do not work as well in most situations (go figure). Cool white bulbs work fine, and they are the cheapest.
Soil Growing Indoors And Outdoors
If you grow your plants with soil in containers that can be moved, one of the best solutions for home gardeners is to use continuous fluorescent light indoors for seedling and vegetative growth then move the plants outdoors for flowering.
This will take advantage of the natural light/dark cycle and cut your energy use to nearly nothing (compared to the same operation using metal halide and/or high pressure sodium lighting indoors).
A small greenhouse can be built from fiberglass or pvc sheets that are innocuous, they can be built to look much like a storage shed or tool shed so it's not likely to raise suspicions.
In fact, a large shed of metal or plywood can be modified with a luminous roof of pvc, glass, fiberglass or plastic sheet, and some marijuana strains that do not require a great deal of light will grow well. Such a shed will discourage fly-by sightings and keep your business your own.
It also allows you to keep out rats, gophers, and neighbor kids. It can also be easily locked up. It will give you an opportunity to actually plant in the ground if you desire, and this is the best way to avoid root-bound plants (if your not using hydroponics), and get bigger harvests.
In winter, indoor space is used to start new seedlings or cuttings to be placed outside in the spring, using natural sunlight to ripen the plants. This routine will provide at least 3 outdoor/greenhouse harvests per year.
With two growing areas (one for the first stages of growth and one for flowering) harvests are possible every 60 days in many areas. with a smaller indoor harvest in the winter as a possibility as well.
The basic strategy of year round production is to understand the plant has two growth cycles. After germination the plant enters the seedling stage (lasts about 1-2 weeks) after which they pass into the vegetative stage (lasts about 2-4 weeks) and will be able to use all the continuous light you can give it. This means there is no dark cycle required.
The plant will photosynthesize constantly and grow faster than it would outdoors with long evenings. Photosynthesis stops during dark periods and the plant uses sugars produced to build itself during the evening. This is not a requirement and the plant will grow faster at this stage with continuous photosynthesis (constant light).
Once the plant is 12-18 inches tall, weather permitting, it can be forced to start flowering by placing it outside in the spring or fall. For summer outdoor flowering, the night must be artificially lengthened in the greenhouse to force the plants to flower. More information about that will be discussed in the flowering chapter of this guide.
Moving the plants to 10-13 hour light periods (when moving them outside) with uninterrupted darkness (no bright lights nearby) will force the plant to flower. They will ripen and be 2-3 feet tall when ready to harvest.
When a plant is moved from continuous indoor light to a 10-13 hour day outside, it will start to flower because the decrease in light tricks the plant into anticipating an oncoming winter.
In most parts of the northern hemisphere, vegetative starts moved outside march 1st, will be ripe by may 1st. Vegetative starts moved outside on may 1st will be ripe by july 1st. Starts moved outside sept 1st are picked by november 1st.
In Winter, operations are moved indoors and a crop is planted for seed in anticipation of planting outdoors the next summer, or just for some extra winter stash.
Keep in mind that the man is looking for plants in the sept/oct/nov time-frame, and may never notice plants placed outside to flower in april. Be smart, make your big harvest in may, not october.
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Books Grow Great Marijuana:
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If you find instructions and books about growing hydroponic marijuana overly technical and hard to follow, this book is a very good choice for simple and accurate instructions. It does not cover advanced techniques so if you already know how to grow, this book would be of little value. But if you are a first time grower with no experience, this is the first book to look at.
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Marijuana Horticulture The Cannabis Grow Bible:
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A very good source of information covering all aspects of growing, from seed selection to harvest, curing and more. Over 300 pages with almost 200 color and black-and-white photographs, charts, and tables. Recommended reference book for indoor and outdoor growers.
A great marijuana growing and breeding guide. Includes chapters on seeds, propagation and germination, growing indoors, growing outdoors, hydroponics, pre-flowering and flowering, predators, pests and plant fungi, breeding, and more.
The Cannabis Grow Bible
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